make install PREFIX installs everything under one directory, not just the binary

2026-03-04 (7m ago)7 views

I wanted to install a locally-built btop++ into ~/.local/bin without touching /usr/local or needing sudo. I knew make install PREFIX=... existed but I always thought of it as mostly moving the binary. Turns out it does a lot more.

Running:

make install PREFIX="$HOME/.local"

produced:

Installing binary to:        ~/.local/bin/btop
Installing doc to:           ~/.local/share/doc/btop
Installing themes to:        ~/.local/share/btop/themes
Installing desktop entry to: ~/.local/share/applications/btop.desktop
Installing PNG icon to:      ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/btop.png
Installing SVG icon to:      ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/btop.svg
Installing man page to:      ~/.local/share/man/man1/btop.1

Everything lands under the same prefix, following the XDG layout (bin/, share/doc/, share/man/, etc.). The man page ends up in ~/.local/share/man/man1/, which man picks up automatically if your MANPATH includes ~/.local/share/man (most distros include it by default).

I think the reason this works cleanly is that GNU Makefile conventions define install paths as $(PREFIX)/bin, $(PREFIX)/share/man/man1, etc., so every directory is relative to PREFIX. As long as the Makefile follows those conventions, PREFIX=$HOME/.local is all you need.

This is the cleanest way to install a source-built tool for a single user — no sudo, no pollution of system directories, and ~/.local/bin is already on $PATH on most Linux systems (and easy to add on macOS).